You’d be picking up your paper, maybe, or because Briggs’ was the only place that sold it, the racing form with yesterday’s Rockingham results and today’s odds. The kid might irritate you slightly — his gawky, dim-witted pleasure at staring at someone undeniably less sociable-looking than he, his slightly pornographic acne, the affectation of his tee shirt and long hair — but still, your curiosity up, you’d pay for your paper and stroll to the door to see what had got the kid so excited.
In a low, conspiratorial voice borne on bad breath, the kid would say, “Take a look at that, will ya? The Guinea Pig Lady.”
She would be on the other side of the street, shuffling rapidly along the sidewalk in the direction of Merrimack Farmers’ Exchange, wearing her blue, U.S. Air Force, wool, ankle-length coat, even though this would be in May and an unusually warm day even for May, and her boot lacings would be undone and trailing behind her, her arms chopping away at the air as if she were a boxer working out with the heavy bag, and she would be singing in a voice moderately loud, loud enough to be heard easily across the street, “My Boy Bill” from Carousel.
“Hey, honey!” the kid would wail, and the Guinea Pig Lady, though she ignored his call, would stop singing. “Hey, honey, how about a little nookie, sweets!” The Guinea Pig Lady would speed up a bit, her arms churning faster against the air. “Got something for ya, honey! Got me a licking-stick, sweet lips!” Then, in a wet whisper, to you: “A broad like that, man, you hafta fuck ’em in the mouth. You can get a disease, ya know.”
If you already knew who the woman was, Flora Pease of the Granite State Trailerpark out at Skitter Lake, and knew about the guinea pigs and, thereby, could reason why she was headed for the grain store, you would ease past the kid and away. But if you didn’t know who she was, you might ask the kid, and he would say, “The Guinea Pig Lady, man. She lives with these hundreds of guinea pigs in the trailerpark out at Skitter Lake. Just her and all these animals. Everybody in town knows about it, but she won’t let anyone inside her trailer to see ’em, man. She’s got these huge piles of shit out behind her trailer, and she comes into town all the time to buy feed for ’em. She’s a fuckin’ freak, man! A freak! And nobody in town can do anything about ’em, the guinea pigs, I mean, because so far nobody out at the trailerpark will make a formal complaint about ’em. Though you can bet your ass if I lived out there I’d sure as shit make a complaint. I’d burn the fucking trailer to the ground, man. I mean, that’s disgusting, all them animals. Somebody ought to go out there some night and pull her outa there and burn the place down, complaint or no complaint. It’s a health hazard, man! You can get a disease from them things!”
In September that year, after about a week of not having seen Flora leave her trailer once, even to empty the trays of feces out back, Marcelle Chagnon decided to make sure the woman was all right, so one morning she stepped across the roadway and knocked on Flora’s door. The lake, below a cloudless sky, was deep blue, and the leaves of the birches along the shore were yellowing. There had already been a hard frost, and the grass and weeds and low scrub shone dully gold in the sunlight.
There was no answer, so Marcelle knocked again, firmly this time, and called Flora’s name. Under her breath, she muttered, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Just what I need.”
Finally she heard a low, muffled voice from inside. “Go away.” Then silence, except for the breeze off the lake.
“Are you all right? It’s me, Marcelle!”
Silence.
Marcelle reached out and tried the door. It was locked. She called again, “Flora, let me in!” and stood with her hands in fists jammed against her hips. She breathed in and out rapidly, her large brow pulled down in alarm. A few seconds passed, and then she called out, “Flora, I’m coming inside!”
Moving quickly to the top step, she pitched her shoulder against the door just above the latch, which immediately gave way and let the door blow open, causing Marcelle to stagger inside, off balance, blinking in the darkness and floundering in the odor of the animals as if in a huge wave of warm water. She reacted like a fireman entering a house filled with smoke. “Flora!” she yelled. “Flora, where are you!” Bumping against the cages, she made her way around them and into the kitchen area, shouting her name and peering in vain into the darkness. In several minutes, she had made her way to the bedroom in back, and there in a corner she found Flora on her cot, wrapped in a blanket, looking almost unconscious, limp, bulky, gray. Her hands were near her throat clutching the top of the blanket, like the hands of a frightened, beaten child, and she had her head turned toward the wall, with her eyes closed. She looked like a sick child to Marcelle, like her own child, Joel, who had died when he was twelve — the fever had risen and the hallucinations had come until he was out of his head with them, and then suddenly, while she was mopping his body with damp washcloths, the wildness had gone out of him and he had turned on his side, drawn his skinny legs up to his belly and died.
Flora was feverish, though not with as high a fever as the boy Joel had endured, and she had drawn her legs up to her, bulking her body into a lumpy heap beneath the filthy blanket. “You’re sick,” Marcelle announced to the woman, who seemed not to hear her. Marcelle straightened the blanket, brushed the woman’s matted hair away from her face, and looked around the room to see if there wasn’t some way she could make her more comfortable. The room was jammed with the large, odd-shaped cages, and Marcelle could hear the animals rustling back and forth on the wire flooring, now and then chittering in what she supposed was protest against hunger and thirst.
Taking a backward step, Marcelle yanked the cord and opened the venetian blind, and sunlight tumbled into the room. Suddenly Flora was shouting, “Shut it! Shut it! Don’t let them see! No one can see me!”
Obediently, Marcelle closed the blind, and the room once again filled with the gloom and shadow that Flora believed hid the shape of the life being lived here. “I got to get you to a doctor,” Marcelle said quietly. “Doctor Wickshaw’s got office hours today, you know Carol Constant, his nurse, that nice colored lady who lives next door? You got to see a doctor, missy.”
“No. I’ll be all right soon,” she said in a weak voice. “Just the flu, that’s all.” She pulled the blanket up higher, covering most of her face but exposing her dirty bare feet.
Marcelle persisted, and soon Flora began to curse the woman, her voice rising in fear and anger, the force of it pushing Marcelle away from the cot, as she shouted, “You leave me alone, you bitch! I know your tricks, I know what you’re trying to do! You just want to get me out of here so you can take my babies away from me! Get out of here! I’m fine, I can take care of my babies fine, just fine! Now you get out of my house! Go on, get!”
Marcelle backed slowly away, then turned and walked to the open door and outside to the sunshine and the clean fall air.
Doctor Wickshaw, Carol told her, doesn’t make house-calls. Marcelle sat at her kitchen table, looked out the window and talked on the telephone. She was watching Flora’s trailer, number 11, as if watching a bomb that was about to explode.
“Yeah, I know that,” Marcelle said, holding the receiver between her shoulder and cheek so both hands could be free to light a cigarette. “Listen, Carol, this is Flora Pease we’re talking about, and there’s no way I’m going to be able to get her into that office. But she’s real sick, and it could be just the flu, but it could be meningitis, for all I know. My boy died of that, you know, and you have to do tests and everything before you can tell if it’s meningitis.” There was a silence for a few seconds. “Anyhow, I don’t want some infectious disease breaking out here, and Doctor Wickshaw could save us a lot of trouble if he’d just drive out here for ten minutes and take a look at this crazy woman so we could know how to handle her. I mean, I maybe should call the ambulance and get her over to the Concord Hospital, for all I know right now! I need somebody who knows something to come here and look at her,” she said, her voice rising.